Marlon Mullen at work in the NIAD studio. | Courtesy the artist and NIAD
A PORTRAIT of a Black male painter in his studio graced the cover of Artforum in January 2017. The issue included a review of “Kerry James Marshall: Mastry,” a 35-year retrospective of the artist. In the painting, Kerry James Marshall depicted his subject with jet Black skin and a precisely sculpted afro. Standing before a hunter green wall with picture molding, the artist is wielding a massive paint-splotched palette.
This commanding portrait inspired a painting by Marlon Mullen (b. 1963), produced the same year the magazine was published. Mullen pictured an otherworldly figure, making the image all his own. He retained the khaki clothing and green background, while adding pink features to the artist’s face and deconstructing the painter’s palette, rendering it unrecognizable.
Books and magazines have fueled the work of Mullen since the mid-1990s. Over the past decade, the artist has narrowed his focus and nearly exclusively employed art magazines as source material. He has reimagined the covers of Artforum, Frieze, and Art in America, producing striking works with unexpected outcomes in terms of color palette, composition, and text treatment.
“Projects: Marlon Mullen” at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is the first solo exhibition of the artist at a major museum. Twenty-five paintings dating from 2015 to 2024 are featured.
From left, MARLON MULLEN, Untitled, 2017 (acrylic on canvas, 30 1/4 × 30 1/4 inches / 76.8 × 76.8 cm). | The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of AC Hudgins. © 2024 Marlon Mullen; Artforum, January 2017: KERRY JAMES MARSHALL, Untitled (detail), 2008 (acrylic on PVC panel, 72 3/4 × 61 1/4 inches);
SINCE 1986, Mullen has been honing his craft at NIAD Art Center in Richmond, Calif. A progressive studio that serves artists with developmental disabilities, NIAD has an extensive library of donated publications that prompt Mullen’s creativity. A series of Time-Life books published in the 1960s about the lives of artists such as Pablo Picasso and 16th century Italian painter Titian has informed his work. The cover of an automotive magazine featuring a red mustang with “GRRR” on its license plate sparked a his interpretation of the “muscle” car.
With the exhibition in development, Mullen visited MoMA last year and toured the collection galleries. After he returned home, MoMA sent along 30 of the museum’s publication, an assortment from over the years. The cache inspired one new painting, an untitled work based on the cover of a book about Vincent Van Gogh’s “The Starry Night” (1899). This 2024 work is being shown for the first time in the exhbition.
Two recent acquisitions will also be on view for the first time. Untitled (2016) and Untitled (2017) were added to MoMA’s collection in 2023 and 2020, respectively. The latter is the painting based on Marshall’s Artforum cover. The work was gifted to the museum by AC Hudgins, an African American collector and longtime member of MoMA’s board of trustees.
The singular lens and fascinating output of Mullen have garnered significant attention for more than a dozen years. He has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Atlanta Contemporary (2015) in Georgia and White Columns (2012) in New York. He was also featured in the 2019 Whitney Biennial and “Under Another Name” (2014), a group exhibition at the Studio Museum in Harlem. The MoMA exhibition is his latest milestone.
“Mullen’s work is a contemporary exemplar of a centuries-old tradition of artists making art about art, an avenue of invention richly represented in MoMA’s collection,” Ann Temkin, MoMA’s chief curator of painting and sculpture and curator of the exhibition, said in the show announcement. “Taking the covers of art books and magazines as his subject matter, Mullen transforms them into dazzling paintings that bring him and us into the thick of today’s art world.” CT
“Projects: Marlon Mullen” is on view in the free street-level Projects gallery at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, N.Y., from Dec. 14, 2024-April 20, 2025
MARLON MULLEN, Untitled, 2024 (acrylic on canvas, 48 × 40 inches / 121.9 × 101.6 cm). | Courtesy the artist, NIAD Art Center, and Adams and Ollman © 2024 Marlon Mullen. Photo by Chris Grunder
Installation view of “Projects: Marlon Mullen,” The Museum of Modern Art, New York, N.Y. (Dec. 16, 2024-April 20, 2025). | Photo: Jonathan Dorado
MARLON MULLEN, Untitled. 2024 (acrylic on canvas, 48 × 40 inches / 121.9 × 101.6 cm). | Courtesy the artist, NIAD Art Center, and Adams and Ollman. © 2024 Marlon Mullen. Photo by Chris Grunder
MARLON MULLEN, Untitled, 2016 (acrylic on canvas, 30 × 30 inches / 76.2 × 76.2 cm). | Collection Evan Ruster. © 2024 Marlon Mullen
In Richmond, Calif., Marlon Mullen works on the last painting for his Museum of Modern Art exhibition, while the sights and sounds of NIAD Art Center hum around him. Since 1986, Mullen has been based NIAD, a progressive studio that serves artists with developmental disabilities. | Video by MoMA
MARLON MULLEN, Untitled, 2016 (acrylic on canvas, 36 × 36 inches / 91.4 × 91.4 cm). | Collection Joyce and Ken Siegel. © 2024 Marlon Mullen
MARLON MULLEN, Untitled, 2015 (acrylic on canvas, 24 × 18 inches / 61 × 45.7 cm). | Collection Paige and Joey Hovsepyan. © 2024 Marlon Mullen
MARLON MULLEN, Untitled, 2017 (acrylic on canvas, 24 × 24 inches / 61 × 61 cm). | Collection Adam Turnbull and Elizabeth Karp-Evans. © 2024 Marlon Mullen
MARLON MULLEN, Untitled, 2018 (acrylic on linen, 36 × 26 inches / 91.4 × 66 cm). | Collection Martin and Rebecca Eisenberg. © 2024 Marlon Mullen. Photo by Charles Benton
Installation view of “Projects: Marlon Mullen,” The Museum of Modern Art, New York, N.Y. (Dec, 16, 2024-April 20, 2025). | Photo: Jonathan Dorado
BOOKSHELF
Marlon Mullen was among the artists featured in the 2019 Whitney Biennial. The accompanying exhibition catalog was edited by biennial co-curators Rujeko Hockley and Jane Panetta. Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) publications of interest include “Ming Smith: The Invisible Man: MoMA One on One Series.” The book was published on the occasion of Projects: Ming Smith. “Among Others: Blackness at MoMA” is a substantial volume featuring nearly 200 works from the museum’s collection and critical essays exploring MoMA’s complicated history with Black art, artists, and audiences. Also consider, “Kerry James Marshall: Mastry,” which documents the artist’s 35-year retrospective, and the recently published volume, “Kerry James Marshall: The Complete Prints: 1976–2022.”
